A Second Chance
by Jak Pickens
Summary: Selina has a second chance to right the wrongs that she'd committed all those years ago, but will she be able to save Bruce in time? And if she does, what then? (Night-of-Episode-Oneshot) (5x07) (BrucexSelina)


**A/N: So…everything isn't going to hell at the end of an episode… In fact, the episode was, dar I say, satisfying... That hasn't happened since like, Season One or something. But in all seriousness, this episode had some really high highs and some really low lows (aka everything with Jim, Barbara, and Lee, but that's just my opinion). Everything with Jeremiah was absolutely fantastic, Bruce killed it, and Selina's character development is finally coming full circle by tying all the way back to her actions (or lack thereof) in Season One, which, as a writer, I think is just an awesome job by the show runners.**

**As for tonight's Night-of-Episode-Oneshot, I think we all know what scene I'm gonna be writing about. So without further ado, I hope you enjoy!**

**A Second Chance**

Selina didn't believe in second chances. Someone had once told her, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." And she lived by those words ever since. If someone broke her trust once, they'd simply do it again once they got back in her good graces. She would neither forgive, nor forget. The laws she lived by were unshakable.

Except when it came to Bruce Wayne.

Time and time again, he'd hurt her. And time and time again, she'd let him back into her life.

Why did she keep doing this to herself? Every time she allowed herself to get close to him or vice versa, he either pushed her away directly, or he did something so unbelievably stupid that she had no choice but to leave him behind.

He'd hurt her more than almost anyone else in Gotham, more than any gangbanger or cop, more than Gordon or the snotty old king of England himself, maybe even more than her mother.

Hell, he'd hurt her _through_ her mother.

She knew that being around Bruce Wayne guaranteed her heartache, and she kept coming back for more.

But in the end, it wasn't up to her. She had to keep coming back. She was tied to him, permanently.

She'd made that choice when she'd done nothing that night. _The _night. The night that she'd first seen him. The night that Jeremiah was trying to force him to relive.

Like hell she was gonna let that happen, if not to for Bruce, then for herself. This was her chance at redemption, her second chance to right the wrongs she'd made all those years ago.

All she had to do was get between the murderous psychopath who'd paralyzed her, and her vigilante ex-boyfriend (if you could even call it that) who wanted nothing more than to take his antagonist down the 'right way', which she knew to be an impossible feat.

Easy enough, right?

Yeah, this was gonna suck, either way. But he'd been there for her, even when she didn't want him to. _Especially_ when she didn't want him to. So she owed it to him to do the same.

Her debts would be paid, the red in her ledger wiped clean out. She would be free from everything and everyone for the first time since that fateful night.

But first, she had to stop Jeremiah.

She ran across Gotham to the alley in the theater district, leaping from rooftop to rooftop with blazing speed and agility. She had to get there in time, but if Jeremiah was playing this thing as accurately as Alfred had said, then she still had a few more minutes before the time when Bruce's parents had been killed.

She was a single block out when she heard a pair of gunshots.

Her stomach dropped and panic seized her body, stopping her dead in her tracks at the edge of a roof. The gunshots had been fired from directly below her in the alleyway.

But it was the _wrong_ alleyway.

She cringed at the sight below, two adults, a man and a woman, lying still as boards on their backs, stripped down to nothing but their underclothes, both with a small, black dot in the center of their foreheads.

They looked so much like Thomas and Martha Wayne, it was scary. But it wasn't them. They were dead. She'd watched them die, watched Bruce mourn over them. Hell, she'd attended the funeral.

No, this wasn't them, but it was a pretty damn close match.

Then, she got a look at their shooter, and her heart nearly hit the floor. She hadn't wanted to believe Alfred when he told her Jeremiah was alive. She'd stabbed him, like, a dozen times, after all. She wanted anyone other than Jeremiah Valeska to be standing over the bodies, gun in hand. She would've taken Jerome, for God sakes.

But, she had no such luck.

Unlike the Waynes, Jeremiah _had_ been raised from the dead.

He reentered the theater, locking the door behind him. Selina overcame her shock and leapt across the gap, going across the roof to the opposite side of the building.

The alley.

She hadn't been back there ever since that night.

Nothing had changed.

If she closed her eyes, she could still picture the scene. A happy family of three, laughing and giggling as they passed through they alleyway to catch an Uptown cab, completely unaware that two of them were about to die, and the third's life ruined.

She climbed out onto the fire escape, slowly and silently descending down the levels. She was five stories from the ground when a door underneath her opened, and out came three people. Even with her superior eyesight, she couldn't make out who the other two people were, but they looked awfully familiar, dressed in the same clothes as what Thomas and Martha Wayne had been wearing that night, pearl necklace and all.

She may've not known the first two, but she knew the third.

Jeremiah led them out of the building and down the alley a ways, putting distance between himself and the theater's exit doors.

Selina prayed a silent prayer to whoever was up there, watching over them. Please, don't let Bruce come running out of those doors.

But, once again, she had no such luck.

"Jeremiah!" he yelled, sprinting out of the building after the three people.

Jeremiah held him at gunpoint and said that that was close enough.

As they spoke, Selina made her way down the fire escape, closer and closer to the ground level where she could actually help when things went south.

She got down to the second story, just a few feet above where she'd been crouched when the Waynes were killed.

It was poetic in a way. In all that time she spent climbing, she'd only gotten a bit higher up from where she'd started. And no matter how far or how fast she ran, she could never get too far from that spot where she'd sat helpless, shocked into silence.

But this was her chance to change that.

She was starting to feel confident. Jeremiah's attention had been turned from the people to purely on Bruce. She could do this, swoop in, get rid of Jeremiah's gun, and allow Bruce to do his thing while he got the two people out of there.

Then, the pair stepped into the light, and her plan went out the window. Jim Gordon and Leslie Thompkins…of course. Because her luck couldn't be any worse.

And, to top it all off, they were hypnotized, because why not?

She shook her head. She could still do this. She just had to break their trance and it'd be a three-on-one fight against Jeremiah.

She'd been presented a second chance, and she had to take it.

This time, she wouldn't sit idly by and watch Bruce's life fall to pieces, not again.

Slowly, she removed her whip from her side and unraveled it. Jeremiah took aim at Gordon, and she struck, knocking the gun out of his hand as Bruce rushed him.

She slipped to the ground level and ripped the necklace off of Leslie's neck, breaking them from their trance.

Meanwhile, Bruce and Jeremiah were going at it viciously.

Selina saw the glint of metal in the moonlight and screamed, "Bruce!" just as Jeremiah swung his knife.

It grazed Bruce's chest, but seemed to cause minimal damage. Bruce turned to her, a growing fire in his eyes. "Get them out of here, Selina," he told her before turning and tearing off after Jeremiah.

She started to follow, but Thompkins grabbed her arm, pulling her to a halt.

"What are you doing?" Selina yelled, trying to wiggle free of her tight grasp. "I have to help him!"

"You have to survive," Thompkins replied. Selina stopped fighting back, momentarily taken off guard by her words. "You have to survive, or he won't," Thompkins told her. "Please, Selina, just this once, trust me. And trust him. He can take care of himself."

"So can I!" Selina replied indignantly.

"Yes, Selina, I know you can, but you need to let Bruce do this, for his sake."

Selina shook her head. "Jeremiah will kill him," she said softly. "And it'll be my fault." She gave Thompkins a long look and then muttered, "Sorry."

"For what?" Thompkins asked, just as Selina kicked her hard in the shin.

She sprinted down the streets. Bruce had turned right, and she just caught glimpse of his silhouette entering a large chemical factory. She followed, scaling up into the rafters to get a bird's eye view.

At some point, she'd grabbed Jeremiah's gun from the pavement and was now aiming it down at where they were fighting. It was a tangle of arms and legs, the pair of them fighting precariously over a vat of a boiling green liquid. She couldn't get a clear shot.

All she could do was watch, again, as Jeremiah shoved Bruce up against the railing of the small platform.

The rails bent, and her stomach shriveled up with dread.

Time slowed down. She could see it in her head, the bar giving out, Bruce falling into the vat of chemical waste, slowly burning to death, alone.

But it didn't go down like that. Jeremiah swung a clothesline, but Bruce used his momentum to flip their positions.

The railing gave out as Jeremiah crashed into it, and he went down, over the edge, and into the chemicals.

He didn't resurface.

And Selina was overjoyed for it.

Her ledger was clean now. She'd paid Bruce back, made her wrongs right. She was free.

So why did nothing feel different? She didn't _feel_ free, not like before.

But she'd saved him, so they were even, now, right?

She'd been lucky enough to get a second chance, and she'd taken it. So why did she feel the same?

The burden was still there, the crushing weight of worry for him…

That's when it dawned on her, the weight she'd been feeling, it wasn't guilt over her inaction, or a debt that needed to be paid.

That weight was Bruce Wayne. She'd gotten too close to another person, and now, like it or not, she was tied to him.

But if she got to do it all over again, if she got a second chance, she wouldn't change what'd happened between them, because as scary as it was to have someone like him in her life, she would do anything to make sure he stayed there, with her.

So much for leaving Gotham…

**A/N: I hope you enjoyed and if you did or have any comments/questions/critiques make sure to let me know in the Review section! Also, if you haven't seen it yet, I published the first chapter of **_**The Escapades of Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle**_** last night. I know; three posts in a week? It's probably never gonna happen again, but I hope you guys are enjoying all the content I'm putting out. Thanks for reading and ciao for now!**


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